


be true to yourself or whatever

by juurensha



Series: do we not bleed [4]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, Parent Kraglin Obfonteri, Post-Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Team Bonding, Team Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 16:05:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11444319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juurensha/pseuds/juurensha
Summary: Sometimes, after hours of whistling, lips cracked and voice hoarse with the arrow still making sudden herky-jerky motions, Kraglin wonders if he should just switch back to his blasters and knives.He knows he won’t though. Stupidly finicky arrow is the last thing he has left of his oddly finicky captain.





	be true to yourself or whatever

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'll round out the series with this one. I realized that Onoda never got on the wall, and I wanted to rectify that, so I decided to make Kraglin fic. I know that Kraglin is canonically Xandarian, but I liked Write_Like_An_American's Hrax idea, so I went with that. Hope you enjoy!

Sometimes, after hours of whistling, lips cracked and voice hoarse with the arrow still making sudden herky-jerky motions, he wonders if he should just switch back to his blasters and knives.

He knows he won’t though. Stupidly finicky arrow is the last thing he has left of his oddly finicky captain.

(Yondu always insisted on a certain order to his little figurines on his dashboard and in his quarters, and woe betide the Ravager who ever knocked them out of order.

Kraglin and Peter had been sure to set out his most cherished figurines in Yondu’s preferred order on his pyre.)

So he continues whistling until he runs out of breath, and then he sits there, slumped over, neck aching with the weight of the head-fin, just holding the arrow in his hands and staring at it.

(Yondu had always made it seem so easy.

He had asked once, running a finger down the arrow, if only Centaurians could use such weapons.

Yondu had snorted and asked, “Why? Looking to replace me, Obfonteri?”

He had protested until Yondu rolled his eyes and replied that while it was mostly a Centaurian thing, it wasn’t like someone else couldn’t learn it. After all, Yondu hadn’t even picked up an arrow until after Stakar had freed him.

Yondu did like to downplay that part of his life though.)

“Kraglin? Hey, Kraglin!”

He doesn’t bother looking up; out of the entire crew, only Peter really ever comes to try and talk to him, and really he wishes the boy would stop trying as well.

(Peter had been much cuter as a child; Kraglin is still of the opinion that he lost most of his charm the older he got, not that it ever made any difference to Yondu.)

“Kraglin,” Peter repeats, sitting down next to him.

Kraglin sighs and levels a look at Peter, “What?”

“It’s dinner-time,” Peter says, gesturing around as strains of that cherry-bomb song floated through the air.

Kraglin waves a hand dismissively, “I’m not done yet.”

“I got the replicator to make chicken-dumpling soup,” Peter wheedles, “It’s a Terran delicacy, and you love soup!”

(Soup was usually a rare meal for the Ravagers since battles could pop up at any point in time, and the last thing you wanted was hot liquid getting thrown in your face when the ship swerved or someone decided you were looking at them funny.

So soup was for relatively safe places, but even if that sounded appealing right now, he doesn’t deserve that.)

“Not interested,” Kraglin insists.

“Kraglin,” Peter says, looking intently at him “Take a break. Yondu wouldn’t want you to burn yourself out—”

“What do _you_ know about what he would have wanted?” Kraglin snaps, glaring at him, “I can count the times you voluntarily came to see us without having some enemy on your tail on one hand.”

Peter frowns, “No, come on, that’s not fair, there was that time on your birthday—”

“That was right after your thing with the Gramosians, and you needed a place to lie low.”

“Okay, then that casino job on Korbin—”

“You just happened to be casing the same joint as us,” Kraglin says, leaning back.

“Then—that time with—oh wait, no, then I had Nova Corps after me again—you know whatever, yeah I should have come by to see you guys more, but that still doesn’t mean I don’t know that Yondu would want you to be okay,” Peter said with a shrug, “Do you remember that time you took a bullet to the gut?”

“Protecting your worthless ass, yeah,” Kraglin replies, rolling his eyes.

(He had instinctively shoved Peter back and gotten shot in his place.

He may have not entirely understood Yondu’s need to take in the kid to make up for all the others, but Yondu would have been unhappy for Peter to get shot.

Not that he was much happier with Kraglin getting shot instead, whistling down hell on the other gamblers and bitching Kraglin out later.)

“Well maybe _someone_ shouldn’t have taught me to cheat at cards,” Peter protests, crossing his arms.

“Maybe _someone_ should have paid more attention and cheated _better_ ,” Kraglin retorts, leaning forward.

“Hey, palming cards is hard when you’re small and your hands are tiny!” Peter says, gesturing around, “And—you know what, we’re off-topic again. The _point_ is, after you got shot in the gut, Yondu was hovering for _days_ around your cot. And yeah, mostly he was cussing you out, but he wanted you to get better.”

“And what, this is your impression of him, or something?” Kraglin asks, raising an eyebrow, “Shitty impression, kid.”

Peter closes his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath, “Okay, you’re being an asshole, but I get it. I know you miss him; I miss him too.”

“You don’t ‘get’ anything,” Kraglin hisses, “You lost a daddy. I lost—”

(A captain, a lover, the man who had picked him out of the mire.)

“You know what I lost,” he finishes quietly.

Peter nods, eyes soft and sad, “Yeah, I know. But, for what it’s worth, you have a place here.”

“Nowhere else to go,” Kraglin replies, leaning back, letting the head-fin clunk against the wall.

Peter frowns at that, but Kraglin stands to follow him into the mess room, so Peter shuts his mouth with a click and leads the way to food.

(The chicken and dumplings or whatever tastes like nothing to him, but then again, everything has tasted of ashes and little else since—

He still can’t believe Yondu’s gone sometimes.

When he first wakes up and the cot is cold, he can pretend that he’s off leading a team on some mission without the captain, but reality has a nasty way of creeping in on him and landing with a thud on his mind.

He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.)

He goes to practice by the control center, thinking that maybe seeing Yondu’s and Tullk’s and all the other Ravager crew’s names on the wall will get his head right, but it’s like a wall of all his mistakes, especially ever since Peter added Ego’s other children’s names to the wall as well.

Well, all his mistakes, except one.

He guesses that Mantis never met Onoda, that they had delivered the shy ogre girl before Mantis had hatched or something.

(He above all people, except perhaps Yondu, should have smelled a rat.

After all, if Ego was so eager to see his children, why didn’t he go get them himself? He had the coordinates, and he had the units.

Far too many units. 

He had known it was a bad idea, but the pay was certainly tempting, and Yondu’s enthusiasm for reuniting the girl with her father had been—endearing, although he would have never said so to Yondu himself.

The children had been surprisingly endearing as well. Onoda, looming over every single crew-member but still attempting to hide behind crates and peering out behind them curiously; Carith, always smiling and clinging to Yondu because Kraglin guessed Yondu was the closest to a familiar shade for the Luphomoid girl; K’affa, wiggling into the skinniest crevices in the ship and sometimes jumping out to scare random crew-members.

Sentiment; it gets you every time.)

Onoda had been his first and biggest mistake as part of Yondu’s crew, but certainly not his last.

He failed him as first mate then and now. One led to them being kicked out of the Ravager fold, and the other led ultimately to Yondu’s death.

He can’t fail him on protecting Peter though. The captain had given up his life for the boy, so the least Kraglin can do is continue to watch over the boy with Yondu’s arrow.

Or really most of the time, his blasters and knives still. Sometimes he thinks he gets the hang of it, and then it boomerangs back wildly and nearly hits Thanos’ daughter.

(Sometimes, late at night, staring at the ceiling, hand tossed at the cold side of the bed, he wonders if he had had a chance to save only one of them, if he would have saved Yondu instead.

In the end, probably not. Yondu would have despised him for the rest of his days.

And Peter, even if far, far away from the cute kid he had been, is still Ravager crew, and someone he has helped keep alive for more than twenty years now.

It’d be a shame for all that blood, sweat, and tears to go to waste now.)

He doesn’t practice near the command center anymore, but he does go by there every day to at least rest a hand against the wall and stare at Yondu’s name

The empty space where Onoda’s name should be lingers uneasily in his mind though, and after a few weeks of considering just picking up a laser and carving it in himself as he had for the Ravager names, he seeks out Rocket instead.

(The least he can do for the girl is have her name put up right and fancy like the rest of Ego’s children, not some slap-dash job.)

“ _Another_ kid?” Rocket boggles at Kraglin, “How many did Ego _have?_ ”

Kraglin shrugs, “A lot.”

“And an _ogre?_ What was he trying to do, build a zoo?” Rockets mutters as he punches something into the datapad he picked up and then turns it around to show Kraglin, “How’s that look?”

Kraglin nods even though he really has no idea how to spell Onoda’s name, but it looks close enough and nice and loopy.

 “’kay, then if you want it up and engraved, you’re going to have to do something about Groot leaving twigs everywhere. It’s driving me nuts,” Rocket said, turning the datapad back around and starting to punch more things into the screen, “Can’t go ten steps without tripping over one.”

Kraglin crosses his arms, “Isn’t that Peter’s job?”

“Peter’s run out of ideas, and besides, you had experience raising him as a teenager right? You want the name or not?”

(On one hand, he’s pretty sure he was the happiest Ravager to no longer have to deal with sullen teenagers when Peter had finally gotten out of that phase, and that included Yondu. And plus, it’s not like he could use his favored tactic of chucking stuff Peter had left sloppily around the ship out the airlock on Groot since Groot can always grow more twigs. And he doesn’t have the lung capacity to go for Yondu’s favored tactic of loudly threatening latrine duty or getting eaten by the crew.

On the other, the name is important.

And if anyone has experience getting sullen, functionally immortal teenagers to stop being a slob and leaving stuff all over the place, it would be him.)

Kraglin sighs and nods, and when Rocket holds out a paw to shake, he takes it.

So, ideas that didn’t involve the airlock or yelling.

Groot doesn’t actually eat, so that rules out withholding treats until everything is cleaned up.

He rules out creating a giant bonfire of the twigs in the common area as both too hazardous and possibly too traumatic.

Groot _is_ however obsessed with some video game involving some flappy bird, so all he really has to do in the end is hack into Groot’s data-pad and stick a parental lock on it with a giant alert to CLEAN UP YOUR SHIT.

It does bring him a barrage of angry "I am Groot!" and Groot trying to loom menacingly over him, but Kraglin has both too many years defending his position as first mate of a Ravager crew and putting up with Peter's antics to even blink. He crosses his arms and stares at Groot, until Groot finally runs out of breath and sullenly starts picking up twigs, while darkly muttering "I am Groooot."

(Who knew Terran and Flora Colossus teenagers were so alike?)

Rocket puts up the name the next day, and Kraglin would chalk that up to a quiet success, if it wasn't for Ego's surrogate daughter seeking him out in front of the wall of names.

(The bug like girl has started to smile more easily and laugh more freely since Peter started giving her blaster lessons, but Kraglin recognizes that frantic, uncertain look in her eyes when she misses a shot or drops something.

It doesn't bode well for what the rest of Ego's kids went through after Yondu and him dropped them off.)

“You—you knew some of them,” she says, wringing her hands in front of her, “Ego's children.”

He crosses his arms, “Yeah. We delivered three of them. Kept the last one.”

“And Onoda—she was before Carith?” she asks.

“She was the first,” he admits, leaning against the wall.

“What was she like?” she asks, her eyes wide.

“She was—shy. Quiet. Liked to hide behind things but liked hearing stories," he said slowly.

Mantis nods, “She sounds—nice.”

"She was," he says heavily, “Ego—he promised he wouldn't hurt them—not that we ever should have believed that. No one pays that much money for kids without something going on.”

They stand in silence for awhile, before Mantis bites her lip and asks, “Did you know Sillat?”

“Who?”

“She was Hraxian, like you.”

“Hraxian street kid?” he asks dubiously.

(Every single one of Ego’s kids listed on that wall were from some pretty rare species. He must have been pretty desperate to be scraping the bottom of the barrel there.)

“Yes,” Mantis replies, nodding eagerly, “She—she wanted to be a Ravager.”

Kraglin snorts, “Her and probably more than half the street kids on Hrax.”

“Including you?”

Kraglin shrugs, “I was just trying to stay alive. Didn't much care beyond the next meal.”

(Hrax was technically part of the Nova Empire, but really it was an armpit of a planet. Smog blanketed the skies, teeming buildings tottered over filthy streets, and gangs fought each other and the Nova-pigs for dominance over the cities.

He has never been back since Yondu picked him up.)

“Then why did you join?” Mantis asks, frowning.

Kraglin feels a small grin flicker at the edge of his mouth, “I tried pick-pocketing Yondu. He caught me, hauled me off to beat me up, we all got jumped by another gang, and he liked the way I handled a knife and recruited me. Made me first mate after a few years.”

“Wow," Mantis breathes, “And you have been together ever since?”

“Yes.”

(More than twenty years of fighting by Yondu’s side and watching his six.

He's been Yondu's first mate for so long, he's not sure anymore if he knows how to be anything else.)

Mantis takes a deep breath before asking, “Why Peter?”

Kraglin frowns, “What do you mean?”

Mantis's eyes flicker nervously but she but forges on, “Why did you keep Peter, and not any of the rest of them?”

He feels the muscles in his jaw tighten and narrows his eyes but manages to hold back what he would say if it had been Peter asking instead, “We didn't know for sure until after K'affa that Ego was killing his kids. Then Ego gave us Peter's coordinates, we picked him up, and then we ran like hell.”

“Oh,” Mantis says, looking down before looking up again, “And Carith and K'affa—you knew them too?”

“Yes.”

“Do you—do you ever think about them, sometimes?” she asks softly.

“What do you want to hear me say? he demands, clenching his fists at his side, “You want me to say that I think about them all the time? No, I don't; sometimes I remember them, but most of the time I have shit to do. You want me to say that I wish we would have kept them? Kind of, but if I had been smart enough to know what was going on, I would have told Yondu to drop them off at some Xandarian orphanage, not keep them. You want me to say I would trade them all again for Yondu back—”

He broke off and looks down at the floor in silence until Mantis gingerly inches forward a bit and says quietly, “Peter wonders that about you too sometimes?”

Kraglin shakes his head, “Just—don't me ask that question. I don't know the answer to it half of the time.”

“Can I ask—Peter also wonders sometimes if you would have rather kept any of the others?” Mantis ventures, reaching out a hand.

Kraglin glares at her hand until she meekly withdraws it, “Yeah, I wondered what it would have been like to keep one of them instead of Peter, but it's not like I think it would have been much better or easier with any of the others. Kids are a pain, but don't tell him that. He has enough shit to deal with.”

They stand in silence for a bit longer until Mantis suggests timidly, “I think he would like to talk to you though?”

Kraglin rolls his eyes, “Peter _always_ wants to talk. Can't cure him of it.”

(Not that they had really tried. Blabbing about _feelings_ and _emotions_ wasn't the Ravager way, but most of Yondu's original crew couldn't exactly resist comforting a crying kid.

And then when said crying kid grew up and _still_ wanted to talk about feelings, they'd just send him to Doc who was programmed to deal with that sort of shit, or in Kraglin's case, get stuck listening to Peter for hours and trying not to roll his eyes if he didn't want to get kicked out of captain's quarters and back to his own dusty bunk.)

“He means well, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing,” Mantis replies firmly.

Kraglin shrugs, “Not much to say, him and me. Haven't had much to say in years, and then he left and put Yondu in a lurch.”

“But—you guys are family.”

“Didn't he say the Guardians now are his family?” Kraglin points out.

“You're a Guardian too now,” Mantis says firmly, gesturing around.

“Whatever that means,” he says sarcastically under his breath.

“It means that we're here for you. All of us,” Mantis says steadily, “That's what they told me.”

Kraglin snorts (of course they would say that to her), but reaches out to pat the girl's shoulder, “Okay, kid. Sure, whatever you say.”

Mantis' eyes go a bit glassier than usual and her antennae glow as she frowns and says, “You feel anger and regret.”

“No shit,” he replies, snatching his hand back.

“Do you—do you blame Peter for Yondu?” she asks worriedly, chewing on her lip.

“No,” Kraglin replies, rubbing his index finger's knuckle into his brow, “No, that was Yondu's choice. Doesn't even surprise me. No, I blame myself.”

Mantis furrows her brow, “But you couldn't have done anything—”

“If I had just kept my mouth shut, no mutiny. No mutiny, more crew. More crew, more space-suits. More suits, then maybe Yondu would still be—”

(Here.

Here with him.)

“No one blames you. Peter doesn't blame you,” Mantis says, carefully reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I know. Doesn't change the facts though,” Kraglin replies, letting Mantis' hand gently rest on his shoulder.

“Peter gave me this wall even though it's partially my fault they're dead,” Mantis says, gesturing at the names of Ego's children, “You guys should still talk.”

“About what?” Kraglin asks, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

Mantis shrugs, “He could use some help with Groot?”

“Oh no,” Kraglin said, backing away, hands up, “Hell no, I've done my time raising a teenager. Did Peter put you up to this?”

“No! It's just—he was really happy with the thing with the video game and the twigs so—it seems like you could help?” Mantis says quickly, holding out her hands placatingly.

She sounds sincere, but Kraglin wouldn't put it past Peter to have put the idea in her head to begin with. He's sneaky like that; they taught him to be.

But it is true that they never taught him how to handle an unruly teenager, since after all, outside of Peter, Ravager teenagers were for the most part hard-case survivors to have made it that far alive.

“Look,” he says, sighing and running a hand through his hair only to bump against the head-fin, “What do you want anyway?”

“I wanted to know more about Onoda since I never met her. And—I wanted to know more about the only other person who remembers them,” Mantis replies, gesturing at the wall.

“I didn't know all of them. Didn't even interact much with the ones we did take,” he points out.

“You still remember them though,” she says quietly.

“Yeah, but that's not much,” he replies, motioning with a cutting gesture at his neck, “They're still dead.”

“Ego never remembered any of them,” she says.

He shrugs, “Ego was a jackass.”

A giggle escapes Mantis that she quickly covers up with a hand over her mouth, “I'm starting to figure that out.”

(He doesn’t think Peter would have ever been so subdued after a lifetime of Ego the way Mantis is, mainly because Ego would have killed Peter within a week or turned the whole planet into goo or whatever he was trying to do.

But—

Look, he knows Yondu and him were shitty parental substitutes, just trying to figure stuff out as they lurched from one disaster to another, but at least Peter is in one piece with perhaps far too many opinions spilling out of his mouth, and not dead or a shadow trying to figure out what it means to be free now after so many years hushed.

And that shouldn’t make any difference because he has been and seen enough iterations of what rough childhoods do to a person, but crew is crew, and crew hangs together especially when one member is especially soft.)

“If you want to hear stories, ask I guess,” he says, looking at her, “And I don’t think it will help much, but if Peter seriously has problems with Groot, you tell him to talk to me directly instead of through you.”

Mantis literally beams, her antennae glowing in the shadows of the ship, “Thank you! And Peter didn’t ask me, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that!”

He doubts that, and Peter doesn’t seek him out (obviously), but later when Groot starts molting distressingly and emitting a moldy odor that had even Rocket trying to shove Groot into the showers, he goes to find Peter himself.

(Kraglin has lived through the sewage filled streets of Hrax and Peter’s teenage funk and refusal to shower and had grown to love Yondu’s constant musk of sweat, alcohol, and blood, but he draws the line at mold.

That’s just unhygienic.)

Peter sees him coming and holds up a hand, “Look, I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. Gamora has already goddamn thrown her _sword_ at him, and he’s still doing that sarcastic ‘I am Groooot,’ thing, with the hand gestures and everything—”

“Got some rope and a big lamp?” Kraglin asks, scratching at his head-fin.

(He’s starting to get used to it, but he’s not sure if he wants to.)

“Um, yeah obviously, but what are you going to do with that?” Peter asks, raising an eyebrow and opening the door to the storeroom.

“Get Drax or Gamora to tie up Groot with the rope. Stick him under the big lamp until the mold crusts and dies, scrape it all off of him. Then threaten him with latrine duty if he doesn’t shower from now on,” Kraglin says, grabbing some rope and reaching up for the large lamp.

“Taking a page from Yondu’s book, huh?” Peter comments, reaching over Kraglin’s head and grabbing the large lamp down.

(Kraglin had snickered when Peter had grown taller than Yondu, but it had been Yondu doubled over with laughter when Peter had grown even taller than Kraglin.

Kid had grown like a weed.)

“If Yondu were here, he’d already be shoveling shit,” Kraglin says, shoving the rope into Peter’s hands.

“That’s true,” Peter says with a small smile before scuffing at the floor with his boot, “You know, Mantis told me that you’d help, but I never thought you’d actually _want_ to.”

Kraglin rolls his eyes, “No one likes mold, Quill. And we always thought you’d end up having to deal with a brat one day, but watching you flail around is starting to be more pathetic than funny.”

“Wait, what do you mean you guys all thought I’d end up with a kid?” Peter asks, brow furrowing.

Kraglin shrugs, “We weren’t sure since you wasn’t full Terran, but Ego had _a lot_ of kids. Why do you think Yondu had Doc give you the talk every other time we went planet or port-side?”

“Okay first of all, it was _every_ time, and second of all, it wasn’t a talk so much as a goddamn textbook. No offense to Doc,” Peter says, holding up his fingers, “There’s never been a better med-bot.”

Kraglin nods, “Best one money could buy,” he says softly, “Can’t find a replacement even in the entire Ravager armada.”

“Speaking of which,” Peter says, digging into his pocket and pulling out a datapad, “Stakar contacted me, a few days back. Said that if you want it, captain of the 79th fleet is open, and—”

“What, you trying to get rid of me? You want me out?” Kraglin snarls, slapping a hand against the wall.

(Figures.

Maybe he’s a reminder of Yondu as much as Peter is to him.

But to hell with that; if he can not only call Peter captain but also wear Yondu’s old head-fin on his own head and attempt to wield his arrow, then Peter can put up with his ugly mug as well.)

“No! It’s just—didn’t you say you have nowhere else to go?” Peter asks, holding his hands up placatingly, “I just thought—that’d you’d want some choice instead of being stuck here with us!”

“If you want me to go Peter, you can fucking do it yourself instead of hiding behind pansy excuses,” Kraglin says, breathing through his nose and crossing his arms.

“I don’t want you to go!” Peter says earnestly, running a hand through his hair, “Seriously Kraglin, I don’t. You’re all I’ve got left of Yondu now. But—you _hated_ dealing with teenagers, and I don’t know, maybe you miss being part of a regular Ravager crew? I don’t want you to feel trapped here.”

“I didn’t _hate_ teenage you,” Kraglin argues, uncrossing his arms, “You were an annoying little shit, true, but that’s always going to be the case. Groot is also at least five times less annoying than you were anyway.”

(And also it was nice to once again be part of a crew where he didn’t have to constantly watch his back. Those last few months where many of Yondu’s faction had been killed during the battle over Xandar and Taserface had been grabbing new recruits had been rough.

He only wishes he could have stabbed Taserface in the gut before Yondu had blown him up.)

“Still, you like being with us?” Peter asks, peering at him with a worried look, “You could be a captain—”

“I’ve been first mate most my life; happy to let someone else call the shots,” Kraglin cuts in, “Besides, serve under one of those hypocrites that kicked Yondu out but didn’t do a thing about Ego themselves? Fuck that; I’d rather you toss me out an airlock.”

Peter nods but still has that disgustingly worried look in his eyes, “Got it, but come on Kraglin. Are you happy with us?”

(Can he be happy with Yondu turned to ashes and scattered among the stars?

All he knows is that such maudlin thoughts would get a kick in the ass from Yondu and a command to get off his ass and carry on, or ain't he worth the flame Yondu pinned to his chest?

And he knows it’s stupid to feel like it’s a betrayal of Yondu every time he snickers at Rocket and Peter bickering, or the thrill of joy when he manages to whistle the arrow clear and true at the target, or grinning as Mantis and Gamora plot how to keep Peter from stealing food off of their plates with decoy plates and the liberal application of hot sauce, but still.

He’s still standing, and that is as much as anyone can ask for in this galaxy.)

Kraglin shrugs, leaning against the wall, “It’s alright.”

Peter sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “Kraglin, I’ve known you since I was a kid, and I still can’t tell what that even means.”

“Yondu would want me to watch out for you, so here I am,” Kraglin says, spreading his hands out, “Besides—it’d be a shame to see you idiots blow yourselves up after all the work we’ve put into keeping you morons alive.”

Peter grins, “Aw, I didn’t know you cared, Kraglin!”

“Don’t start singing,” Kraglin warns as Peter carefully slings an arm across his shoulders.

“I’ll put on Southern Nights for you later,” Peter says cheerfully.

“Rocket’s put that on way too many times, do that flashlight song instead,” Kraglin grumbles, shoving Peter’s arm off.

“Sure,” Peter says, still grinning and holds up the lamp and the rope, “Thanks for the help!”

“Just go get rid of the mold,” Kraglin replies, waving Peter off.

(His bed is still cold, and he will never make the arrow dance with the sinuous grace that Yondu had, but Peter has turned out better than either of them had expected, and he is still flying.

His old life is gone, but as he watches Peter and Gamora take turns at lecturing Groot while Drax holds him in place, Rocket shakes his head and interjects his own comments in every once awhile, and Mantis carefully adjusts the heat lamp, he doesn’t think this new life is too bad. Rocket builds amazing gadgets and bombs, Gamora cuts through enemies the way Yondu did with his arrow, Mantis asks him for stories and smiles at all of them, Drax is always happy to spar, Peter leads with surprising charm, and he knows they have his back.

He will mourn Yondu until the day he dies, but anyone who fucks with his current crew is going to get an arrow to the face, followed by several knives.

Still, he can’t wait for Groot to grow up.

He _hates_ dealing with teenagers.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Please comment/leave kudos!


End file.
